Hannah has removed the cloth from her eyes. Hannah dares to ask why would Black people want a “race war” when they are a minority of the population and would surely lose?—and Wes says cuttingly, “Don’t ask me, Hannah. Ask them.”

  Wes is looking grim but enlivened, alert. A youthful flush has risen in his face. Hannah recognizes her husband’s combative mode, hopeless to reason with him at such a time.

  Wes removes the key from the bedside table drawer, unlocks the mahogany cabinet, removes the revolver from the shelf and weighs it in his hand. The flush in his face deepens. Hannah sees there a kind of awe.

  As if she has glimpsed by chance her husband’s naked body, cruelly exposed.

  So little in Wes’s life has prepared him for this. All the more reason then, Wes is thrilled and enlivened by this.

  Warrior male, protecting his family. Protecting his race: white.

  Hannah dreads an accident with the gun. So many guns in Detroit in the past fifteen years, Motor City USA has become Murder City USA, a designation of which many locals are perversely proud. Each day’s news brings with it more shootings, more deaths, some of these designated “gun accidents.”

  Hannah is sure that Wes has never gotten around to taking a single lesson at a gun range, nor has he cleaned the gun once since bringing it home.

  Doesn’t a gun have to be oiled? So far as Hannah knows, Wes doesn’t even have the equipment to clean his gun.

  She’d imagined leading the ponytailed boy into this room. A promise of lovemaking in her bed, upstairs in the fancy Colonial, how thrilled Mikey would have been, utterly astonished when Hannah used the gun against him.

  What a thought! Sheer fantasy. Hannah could not lift a gun, aim a gun at another person even to save her life. She could not.

  “… keep the gun in the drawer beside the bed from now on, where it’s accessible in an emergency.”

  Wes is addressing her, sternly. He has shut the cabinet, the gun will now be kept in the bedside table at close hand.

  Hannah tries to absorb this new information. Weakly she objects: What about the children? Guns are supposed to be locked away …

  “The children never come into this room. They have no interest in this room. Keep the damned door closed. Make sure Ismelda keeps it closed. These are not normal circumstances, Hannah. Our friends were brutally murdered just last night in their house a few miles away.”

  Our friends. So Wes, too, has come to think of the older couple as friends.

  Almost, Hannah has forgotten why Wes is so agitated, in such a state of panic, why she has been lying with a cold compress against her eyes, why the phone has been ringing.

  Wes takes care placing the revolver in the drawer of the bedside table. The weapon so large, bulky, he has to reposition it in order to shut the drawer.

  “And you were opposed to having a gun in the house at all! Imagine, if our house was ‘invaded’ and we didn’t have a weapon to defend ourselves, and couldn’t get to it quickly, what happened to the Rusches last night might have happened to us.”

  • • •

  In stealth, while Wes is watching TV news downstairs, Hannah calls her lover in the hotel. But the phone rings unanswered.

  Hannah tries several times, out of nervousness earlier than they’d planned but later, at the designated time, Y.K. doesn’t answer, either.

  Listening to the futile ringing, trying not to become further upset.

  Trying not to think—But you love me! You have promised.

  • • •

  By morning much more is known of the home invasion in Bloomfield Hills.

  Lurid banner headline on the front page of the Detroit Free Press, articles related to the murders comprising most of the page, photographs of the victims at which Hannah can’t bring herself to look.

  The surprise is, there is a third victim: the Rusches’ housekeeper of twenty-six years, overlooked in the first reports as if mere collateral damage.

  Wes insists upon reading from the newspaper to Hannah before he leaves for work in the morning. A drumming in Hannah’s head, a residue of the migraine of the previous day can’t entirely block Wes’s words uttered in appalled indignation describing the murder scene on Balmoral Drive: the housekeeper discovered downstairs bludgeoned to death, the Rusches discovered in their upstairs bedroom bludgeoned and stabbed to death by an intruder who’d forced his way through a rear entrance of the house sometime, it is estimated, between ten and midnight.

  In a hallway outside the kitchen the housekeeper was struck down as she was fleeing her assailant, and killed with multiple blows to the head; the Rusches, preparing for bed upstairs, were struck numerous times with the hammer and stabbed as well, dozens of times, with a steak knife taken from the kitchen. The bedroom was said to resemble a “slaughterhouse” but each of the Rusches, lying on the floor, though badly disfigured, was covered with a sheet pulled from the bed.

  The hammer was removed from the scene and hasn’t been found, the knife was left at the scene, dropped on the floor beside the bodies.

  Christina Rusch, sixty-one. Harold Rusch, sixty-three.

  Housekeeper Elizabeth Derry, forty-nine.

  A “third resident” of the household is Bernard Rusch, thirty-two, son of the murdered couple, who, according to his attorney, had not been in Bloomfield Hills that night, or indeed since Labor Day; instead, Bernard Rusch had been staying at a family property at North Fox Lake, in northern Michigan, two hundred fifty miles away.

  Like other properties on Balmoral Drive the Rusches’ house is surrounded by a six-foot fieldstone wall with a gated entrance, discovered unlocked when a contractor arrived in the early morning to meet with Harold Rusch.

  The gate was usually locked at night though routinely kept unlocked, and open, during the day to let workmen, tradesmen, and deliverymen in and out.

  When the contractor knocked at the front door of the house at about seven-fifteen no one came to answer. Usually, he said, Mr. Rusch was waiting for him, or the housekeeper might open the door, but that morning there was no one, he called Hello? a few times and peered through downstairs windows, saw, or thought he saw, a body lying on the floor inside, and called the police.

  The motive appeared to be robbery, Bloomfield police are saying: several rooms were ransacked, drawers containing Christina Rusch’s jewelry were yanked open and partly emptied, Harold Rusch’s wallet was found on the floor empty of cash and credit cards …

  All this, a torrent of words, Hannah has been hearing discontinuously as Wes paces about the bedroom reading to her in an excited voice. She has slept fitfully the night before and is feeling exhausted already: Wes woke early to hurry downstairs and bring in the newspaper as soon as it was delivered at six-twenty.

  “There’s never been anything like this!—not where we live. Detroit is ‘Murder City’—but not here.”

  Reluctantly Hannah takes the newspaper from Wes and stares at the front page in dread of what she will see.

  “First, the serial sex pervert—Babysitter—abducting and murdering our children; now, a home invasion.”

  At first Hannah doesn’t recognize Christina in this photograph taken years ago: an attractive woman in her forties resembling the mature Joan Crawford, something tense about her mouth, dark lipstick. Her hair is incongruously bouffant, lifting from her head like an explosion of confetti. The eyes are steely, ironic.

  Harold Rusch, too, looks different than Hannah recalls, certainly younger, jowls less prominent. A somber face, a self-important face, crease between his eyes, eyes fixed on the camera. A shrewd executive, it has been said of Harold Rusch. Did Harold Rusch have enemies? How possible, a man of his stature in a very competitive business would not have enemies?

  Hannah reads briefly of Christina Rusch: active in local charitable organizations, philanthropy. There is much more in the paper about Harold Rusch, of course. Very little, a mere sentence or two, about Elizabeth Derry who’d emigrated to the United States from Cork, Ireland, in 1949 and had worked for the Rusches since 1951.

  A touching photograph of Christina and Harold on their wedding day in 1937: each so young, Christina a mere girl, smiling happily, untouched by irony; and her tall smiling bridegroom in a marine dress uniform …

  On page sixteen of the newspaper Hannah finds what she has been looking for—a photograph of Bernard Rusch, 32.

  The only child of Christina and Harold Rusch. Photojournalist, freelance.

  Adjunct instructor at the Cranberry School of Art, Detroit Artists League, Wayne State University Continuing Education.

  Residences in Bloomfield Hills and North Fox Lake, Michigan.

  Another time it is stated—clearly: by his lawyer—that Bernard Rusch had not been living at 11 Balmoral Drive since Labor Day.

  Hadn’t been in contact with his parents for several weeks. Not a working phone at the lodge at North Fox Lake. Had known nothing of the murders until police officers came to inform him in the late morning of the day following the murders …

  In the photograph, taken in 1973 for a formal occasion, Bernard Rusch is well-dressed: natty sport coat, stylishly narrow necktie, Oxford shirt. His hair is thicker, and has been neatly trimmed and combed. No mustache, his chin is clean-shaven. The acne-pitted skin isn’t evident, nor are there visible lines and dents in his forehead. But: those ice-pick eyes. A coy curve of a smile, a wish to deceive.

  Cunt he’d called her. Certainly, this is the man.

  Hannah sits heavily at the edge of the unmade bed. She is feeling nauseated suddenly. She is feeling like a compass whose needle spins dizzily.

  Wes is in the shower, he will leave soon for the Fisher Center. Ismelda is with the children, dressing them for school—Hannah can hear their uplifted voices, and feels relief. She is still in her nightgown which feels slatternly to her, smelling of her body. Too lethargic, too headachy, to take a shower, to dress herself and come downstairs; too sick at heart to play Mommy this morning.

  For you do need energy, to play Mommy.

  Children plucking at Mommy’s heart, tearing out handfuls of Mommy’s flesh. Mommy’s love for these small antic creatures is a soft warm taffy, stopping up her throat. Can’t chew, can’t swallow, can’t spit out.

  Ismelda can drive the children to school this morning. If she’s feeling stronger by the afternoon Hannah will pick them up.

  Christina Rusch, too, had been a mommy. But long ago.

  You could see in her face, that warning Don’t touch me!—it had been a very long time ago.

  Strange, a mother might come to be repelled by her own child. By the physical being she has given birth to.

  When a child is no longer a child but has grown into something else.

  How he’d sneered at her, and at her companion Hannah, seated behind the wheel of the silver-gray Cadillac. Why was he his mother’s chauffeur on that occasion, to what purpose was the son pressed into such servitude, clearly against his wishes?

  Strange, and terrible, to think of self-possessed Christina Rusch murdered in the beautiful house on Balmoral Drive. Six point five million dollars the magnificent house had cost, Hannah has heard; and that had been years ago in the mid-1950s.

  Bludgeoned, stabbed.

  Slaughterhouse.

  What will police make of it, that the housekeeper had been struck with the murder weapon just a few times while the Rusches had been struck multiple times, and then stabbed. And then, their mutilated bodies covered with bedclothes.

  Hannah thinks uneasily of Y.K., who hadn’t answered her call the night before. After he’d extracted from her a promise that she would call him at the precise hour of midnight.

  I love you so much, Hannah. We need to be together.

  She will call him this morning, she thinks. If he doesn’t call her.

  As soon as Wes is gone. Ismelda, the children gone from the house—she will call the number she has memorized.

  His voice, his comforting voice, the solace of his voice—Darling Hannah, you have come to dwell in my heart.

  She will not speak of the home invasion. She will not ask him if he’d known the Rusches.

  The subject is too upsetting, too awful. How frail romantic love, whispers of love between lovers, set beside bludgeoning, stabbing.

  No. She won’t ask.

  It’s rare that they speak of anything beyond themselves, or beyond the hotel room in which they meet. No reason for Hannah to speak of a terrible triple murder just a few miles from her home.

  If Y.K. detects that Hannah is upset about something she will tell him it’s only because she misses him. Because she has to live a false life, apart from him.

  Yet with a part of her mind trying to determine: what possible connection between the son of the murdered Rusches and her lover Yaakel Keinz. If that is his name.

  For, hadn’t the ponytailed boy drunkenly boasted of visiting a house on Balmoral Drive, a large house behind a gate; and wasn’t the ponytailed boy in the hire of Y.K.? And in the corridor outside Y.K.’s suite at the Renaissance Grand Hotel Hannah had seen Bernard Rusch, she is sure.

  Like pushing together the pieces of a shattered vase, nothing to make the pieces adhere. Yet, you can see that they fit together.

  When Wes goes downstairs Hannah remains in the bedroom to make the surreptitious call. With mounting desperation she hears the ringing phone, unanswered.

  Perhaps it’s too early for Y.K. to answer the phone. He hadn’t answered at midnight when Hannah called, he may have been out late the night before.

  “Please answer! I am so lonely.”

  Hannah hangs up the phone. She will wait a while, she will try again.

  Wes has left the drawer of the bedside table open an inch or so, Hannah pushes it shut. The gun! So close beside their bed, loaded, ready to be fired. Hannah is filled with dismay, repugnance.

  It may be true, the children would never come into this bedroom. They have never evinced the slightest curiosity in the room, only in Mommy and Daddy in the room.

  But Hannah resents it, that Wes should put them all at risk on a whim of his.

  Ignorant, racist. If only a whim.

  Yet: Hannah cannot defy Wes, she would only antagonize and madden him.

  Recalling with a shiver the matter-of-fact way her lover had assured her—When it’s the right time for me to meet your husband, that will be arranged.

  A Loaded Gun

  And another time, Hannah calls the number at the Renaissance Grand. With mounting anxiety that her lover is not returning her calls, very conspicuously not returning her calls.

  He has left Detroit. Gone away without me.

  But no! Not possible.

  Hannah is dismayed, distracted. Hadn’t Y.K. asked her to call him at a specific time, to make a plan for meeting again, and for bringing Conor and Katya to meet him?—yet now he isn’t answering her calls, though Hannah has left messages each time.

  Such love for Hannah, such tenderness, he’d professed when they were last together! He’d bared his heart to Hannah as no one had, she’d been deeply moved, suffused with hope.

  Certainly Y.K. is sincere. His eyes welling with tears. Hannah knows, cannot believe otherwise.

  “Mommy?”—Katya is frowning at her, as Hannah seems to have lost her place in The Littlest Hedgehog.

  So distracted! Half listening for the phone to ring elsewhere in the house though knowing (of course) that Y.K. would never call her at such a time, when Wes is home.

  Katya has been regarding Mommy with concern lately. Leaning forward to touch the bridge of Mommy’s nose, to smooth away the (evident) frown line between Mommy’s eyebrows.

  Hannah laughs sharply, this was funny …

  Well, no. Not so funny.

  Is it showing in my face?

  Can everyone see?

  She wonders if Wes suspects. If Wes knows.

  But Wes avoids thinking of her at all, Hannah guesses. That a woman would wish to protect a rapist, a (white) woman, a (Black) rapist …

  Often, in weak moments, self-pitying, self-loathing, Hannah has come to believe that a dark-skinned parking attendant had indeed assaulted her, in the concrete stairwell at the Far Hills Marriott.

  Not that she’d seen his face, she had not. Possibly he hadn’t been dark-skinned, exactly.

  Hannah resumes her reading of The Littlest Hedgehog with renewed vigor. She is resolved to keep her voice light, animated. This is something Mommy can do for the children: reading them to sleep at night, as her own mother rarely did, and her father, never.

  They will remember me as a good mother. Reading to them at bedtime.

  Before—we moved away …

  But Hannah cannot imagine how that will happen: move away.

  How she can possibly leave Wes to live with another man, or marry another man.

  How she can possibly bring the children with her.

  Hannah has made some vague, discreet inquiries. A call to a divorce lawyer of her acquaintance, explaining that she was calling for a friend, to ask about finances, how one would find out if a spouse had secret bank accounts offshore … The divorce lawyer advised Hannah to tell her friend that that might be difficult (if not high-risk), for if the spouse suspects that divorce is even being contemplated he could retaliate immediately by withdrawing all their money from joint accounts and engaging a lawyer of his own.

  Assume that a husband shrewd enough, and ruthless enough, to maintain stealth bank accounts offshore is also a husband likely to be alert to a wife’s suspicions; like a chess grandmaster, he will be roused to killer mode by the first naïve move of his far less experienced opponent.

  Once the war is on, there’s no stopping it. So Hannah has been advised.

  And Y.K. has cautioned her not to speak of separation or divorce to Wes. To keep their relationship secret for the time being.

  Marriages end. When it’s time for an ending.

  Hannah has been realizing, she has no idea where Y.K. lives when he isn’t in Detroit. No idea where his family lives. Where he was born, what the family business is, or was. His parents emigrated from—where? So intimately, so openly, Y.K. has spoken of himself, his brothers, his mother, his near-suicide in an unnamed city—Hannah can’t believe that he would cease loving her, and so abruptly.